New Documents Raise Question of Who Wanted Who in Stephen Bloom Flap

It's Stephen Bloom week, apparently. Yet again.

Earlier this week the University of Iowa journalism professor that chronicled the fallout from his Atlantic Monthly article criticizing Iowa's role in the presidential selection process.

His , which suggested that Iowa was too rural, backward and decaying to be representative of the country, set off a strident state wide reaction that continued for weeks.

This morning, the Iowa City Press-Citizen and the Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that Bloom expected to be on national shows, including Comedy Central's the Colbert Report and CNN's John King Show. Those appearances fell through, though.

This casts a slightly different spin on the subject of who wanted who.

Bloom previously said he turned down several interview quests from national shows like Comedy Central's the Colbert Report.

The new documents uncovered by the Gazette and Press-Citizen show Bloom actively courted staff from at least one network to let him on. The news organizations shared the $210 cost of gathering and releasing the information via an open records request to the University of Iowa.

This from the Press-Citizen:

In one note dated Dec. 11, he asked a CNN employee to pass his story on to people at the show “State of the Union” and expressed excitement about appearing on Comedy Central.

Emails indicate that a producer for the “Colbert Report” contacted Bloom on Dec. 10, one day after the story was published, asking him to appear on the show the night of the Iowa Caucuses.

And later in the article:

In an email to Garance Franke-Ruta, a senior editor at The Atlantic, dated Dec. 14, Bloom wrote, “Colbert pulled out, but I’m appearing on CNN’s John King Show tomorrow, 6-7 p.m.”

Those appearances did not happen. An interview with Bloom on Rock Center with Brian Williams on NBC.